This lady’s story grows stranger and stranger.   It seems — though her parents deny it — that, when she was a young white blonde girl, she had to hunt for her dinner every day with a bow and arrow, or something like that.  After all, she was born in a teepee.   And the Reverend Al Sharpton, our nation’s moral conscience, has come to her defense against her parents, who have done something that’s somehow wrong in... Read more

    Yes, yes, yes.  I agree that the crimes of certain Muslims are far, far, far worse than those mentioned in the article below.  I don’t dispute that for a moment.   But that still doesn’t justify the sorts of things reported here:   http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/06/17/why-this-has-been-the-worst-year-for-american-muslims-since-911/?tid=sm_fb   We haven’t yet managed, alas, to put an end to the obscenities perpetrated by al-Qa‘ida and by the nihilistic death-cult calling itself the “Islamic State.”  But it’s within our power to maintain a society... Read more

    People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.Love them anyway.If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.Do good anyway.If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.Succeed anyway.The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.Do good anyway.Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.Be honest and frank anyway.The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.Think big anyway.People favor underdogs... Read more

    Philip Jenkins writes to William Hamblin.   Dr. Hamblin continues with his response to Dr. Jenkins.     Read more

    I’m not a fan of Donald Trump.   And neither, it seems, is Kevin Williamson:   http://www.nationalreview.com/article/419853/witless-ape-rides-escalator-kevin-d-williamson   Wow.     Read more

    I’m dismayed by trends that I see both domestically and abroad.   I keep thinking, of late, about these lines from William Butler Yeats’s 1919 poem “The Second Coming”:   Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst... Read more

    Luke 9:52-56   These verses speak eloquently of the Savior’s desire not to damn or to hurt, but to save and to bless.   Again, this portrayal seems incompatible (to me, at least) with what I understand to be the Calvinist position that some — indeed, most — of humanity were created to be vessels of wrath, destined irrevocably to be sent to eternal torment in Hell.   Could the person quoted in verse 55 really be the... Read more

    The courageous Ralph Hancock continues to write thoughtfully on subjects that we’re no longer really supposed to think about:   http://ldsmag.com/truth-tolerance-and-sexual-morality/   Are we only now realizing the true identity of “the great and abominable church”?     Read more

    Luke 9:51 Compare Matthew 19:1-2; Mark 10:1   I’m struck by this language: “When the days drew near for him to be received up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.”   First of all, I’m not sure that the idea of being “received up” here refers to his ascension or even his crucifixion, both of which are still months away.  It may be that it refers to his “going up” — both literally and figuratively —... Read more

    I’m a great believer in peer review.   I think that, although it’s not indispensable — a great piece of work remains a great piece of work whether it’s been approved by two or three peer-reviewers or not  (as in the cases, for example, of Newton’s Principia, Mendel’s papers on genetics, Darwin’s Origin of Species, and Einstein’s initial article on special relativity) — it’s extremely useful, and particularly helpful to editors.   But it’s not all-powerful.  It wields no... Read more